ACT Youth Theatre

On Sunday 21st June 2015 16 members of the ACT Youth group accompanied by four of their tutors boarded a flight to Pisa in Italy to take part in a week of workshops and performances hosted by Teatro Rumore at the Gran Teatro Puccini in Viaggio.

This was the start of an exciting adventure but also the end of a longer journey. The play they were going to perform - Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent was written as part of the National Theatre New Connections Festival 2015.

Each year ten established playwrights are commissioned to write a play for young people to perform and out of the numerous entries 500 companies are chosen to take part. Each company works on one play and has a home performance and one at a local partner theatre. For ACT, based in Brighton, the partner theatre was Chichester Festival Theatre with the performance happening at the Capital Theatre in Horsham. The National Theatre sends a member of their directing team to each of the home performance to report on the production. Our Hacktivists group had an extremely positive report from the visiting director and encouraged by this had gone on to The Capital in Horsham, which is a big venue seating 600 people - undaunted our young actors did an excellent performance.

With kind permission from the playwright ACT secured the rights to perform Hacktivists in Italy as part of a cultural exchange with Teatro Remore. In May the Italian youth theatre visited the UK and performed at The Lantern Theatre, ACT's performance space as part of the Brighton Festival. Their show 'Questo Strangolato Rumore' (This Strangled Noise) was both dynamic and poignant looking at issues of mental health and inspired by the work of Mario Tobino, who worked in a mental hospital from 1942 to 1980.

Stretching mind, body, voice & imagination

Youth 15+ years

Youth Members can also enrol for the prestigious Trinity Guildhall Speech & Drama exams (tuition & exam fees available on request). ACT is a registered Trinity Guildhall Examination Centre.

Anyone may enrol throughout the year to join AKT Youth: however for specific productions or projects (such as when participating in the official Brighton Festival or National Theatre Connections project) application to join the Youth Theatre is by Audition only. Productions and projects will incur additional costs and a binding commitment to the rehearsal and performance schedule for students. Auditions are open to members and non-members of ACT Youth Theatre. For any members not wishing to take part in the productions or projects, classes will take place alongside these as normal.

ACT Youth News & Archive

ACT Youth Theatre Present

Hacktivists
by Ben Ockrent

When Eloise is tasked with showing new girl, Beth, around the school, she takes her to the "Hackerspace" where her and her gang of nerdy friends hang out - a
disused portacabin they've turned into a student-run IT lab. Although the gang call themselves Hackers, their activities are entirely harmless... Until the gang's
self-elected leader, Archie, is humiliated by the school bully and Beth inspires them to use their tech-savviness to avenge him. Revelling in their newfound power, the
group allow Beth to lead them in an increasingly dangerous direction. With Archie usurped and everyone in Beth's thrall, just what kind of hackers will they become and
what will it take to stop them?

Hacktivists appears as part of The National Theatre New Connections 2015- the UK's most
exciting festival of Youth Theatre. NT Connections
2015

A group of friends have formed a new band. Now all they have to do is raise the money to get to
London to audition for the world's biggest talent contest.

Costumes, songs and fundraising techniques may divide opinion but one girl has a far more important
choice to make. Their journey for fame and fortune is really a journey for something far less
glamorous. Something their country doesn't approve of, something their parents wouldn't condone. In a
culture of instant fame and talent-show 'stories', the importance of life and friendship come to the
fore.

A tale about friendship, a journey and the risks that teenagers take when plunged into an adult
world.

Journey To X appears as part of The National Theatre New Connections 2011 - the UK's most
exciting festival of Youth Theatre. NT Connections
2012

To book tickets for Chichester please go to www.cft.org.uk or call the Box Office on 01243 781312.

Bassett appears as part of The National Theatre New Connections 2011 - the UK's most exciting festival of Youth Theatre. NT Connections 2011

ACT Youth Theatre

Bassett

by James Graham

Directed by Janette Eddisford & Daniel Finlay

Citizenship class at Wootton Bassett School and the supply teacher has gone a bit nuts, doing a runner and locking the pupils in. That's bad enough, but tensions are
higher today than normal, a day when only yards from their confinement a repatriation of fallen British soldiers is happening along the high street - as it has over a
hundred times before through this quiet Wiltshire town. And this one is more personal than most ...

Dean needs the toilet, Aimee needs a coffee, Amid needs to pray, and Leo ... well, Leo really, really wants to be at the repat, and is determined to escape. As factions form and secrets are revealed, maybe he's not the only one who'll want to get away.

Bassett is a pacy, funny and exhausting look at young people who have inherited a world at war; who, as they grow older, are starting to ask questions about these
conflicts, their country, and themselves.

Fugee: Slang for refugee of political oppression or natural disaster.Fugeed: Something that has been lived in, soiled, stained or damaged.

Kojo is 14 but no one believes him; he's just one of the unaccompanied minors arriving in London, abandoned on the streets of the UK. Ara's from Baghdad and still hears the bombs at night. Cheung can do back flips and is from village in China that is more than a thousand years old. Orphans in London, they are the only family they have now. Together they tell Kojo's story: a story of lost childhood, tall trees and a murder in motion; a murder by a child that everyone says is a man.

ACT Youth Theatre are the oldest of our AKT - Act Kids Theatre groups which meet during term time on a Saturday morning. ACT Youth won 1st Place in 'Group Acted Scene' at this year's Springboard Brighton and Hove Youth Performing Arts Festival with an extract from Fugee. For more details please visit our AKT pages.

ACT Youth member Amy collected the Festival Shield and winners' certificate from head adjudicator Phillip Thrupp who praised the group on their ensemble skills and how well they had told a powerful and political story through their imaginative use of the stage.

Fugee by Abi Morgan was originally written for the 2008 National Theatre New Connections. Kojo is 14 but no one believes him; he's just one of the unaccompanied minors arriving in London, abandoned on the streets of the UK. Ara's from Baghdad and still hears the bombs at night. Cheung can do back flips and is from village in China that is more than a thousand years old. Orphans in London, they are the only family they have now. Together they tell Kojo's story: a story of lost childhood, tall trees and a murder in motion; a murder by a child that everyone says is a man.

Abi Morgan's award-winning plays include Skinned, Sleeping Around, Tiny Dynamite and Tender and Splendour, which was recently broadcast on Radio 3. For TV: My Fragile Heart, Murder, Tsunami - The Aftermath and Sex Traffic, a multi-award-winning drama for Channel 4. Film includes Brick Lane, an adaptation of Monica Ali's bestselling book. White Girl, a 90-minute film for BBC2 will be broadcast in early 2009.